


Twenty-One Guns

by NoirSongbird



Series: Our Kingdom Awaits [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Sad!76, survivor's guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-08-09 22:20:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7819468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoirSongbird/pseuds/NoirSongbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Soldier: 76 visits the grave of the man who was once Jack Morrison's whole world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twenty-One Guns

**Author's Note:**

> So, yeah, this is the last oneshot I'm going to do, next thing in this series will be me jumping into the multichapter fic that's going to be the main body of it! I can't say when that'll go up since I'm leaving shortly for a vacation that will leave me with limited internet, but IDEALLY I'll get some writing done while I'm there!

Soldier: 76 was  _ tired. _

That was understatement and perfect description both, he thought, as he slunk through Arlington Cemetery at well past two in the morning. This place wasn’t well-guarded - it wasn’t like there were many threats; vandalism was about it, and few vandals were willing to dare a national cemetery of military heroes  _ next door to a base.  _

Soldier: 76 was no vandal, but he also didn’t want to be seen during the day. His business - and his  _ identity  _ \- were his own, and he would likely have to reveal at least one of those if he tried to come to the cemetery during normal hours.

He didn’t bother switching on his visor’s illumination - he knew the path by heart, from the same entrance he’d come to every year twice a year for six years, a path he was certain he could now trace by heart. He walked past the grave that read  _ Jack Morrison  _ and paused, for a moment, to take in the sheer number of flowers stacked on it. Obviously, people were coming to visit.

76 sighed, took a few more steps, and carefully set the bundle of flowers he was carrying onto the next grave over. There were much fewer bouquets there - two, three when he put down his bunch of marigolds.

He sat down in front of the grave and removed his mask.

“Hey, Gabriel,” he said, and he ran a gloved hand over the engraved name. “I miss you.”

To say the least. It felt like every time he came here, he found himself saying exactly the same thing, like it would change anything.

“God,” he said, reaching up to run a hand through his hair, “I know I keep saying the same shit over and over, but there’s  _ so much  _ I didn’t get to say to you before Zurich. I...I sort of thought we’d have forever, you know? Or at least longer than we did.” He shook his head. “I was so  _ stupid,  _ Gabi, I wasted so much time - it always felt like there was something else to do, somewhere else to be, and you were always out there running Blackwatch, being a hundred times the commander I was.”

Maybe that was a lowball estimate. Jack   had never been fond of Blackwatch’s methods, but no one could deny they got  _ results.  _ Hell, even Blackwatch’s coups were efficient - they’d gone in to kill him and they undoubtedly would have succeeded if Gabriel hadn’t been there. If Gabriel hadn’t sacrificed himself. 

He shook his head, briefly. Gabriel was dead - dwelling on the hows would just make this even more miserable. 

“Finally heard some news about McCree. Sounds like he got himself involved in some kind of hypertrain robbery - if I know him, trying to stop it. Sounds like the type of thing you’d have been proud of. That punk kid you pulled out of Deadlock is all grown up and working as a vigilante. Still doing the hero thing. So I guess you taught him right.” He leaned forward a little.

“I think one of your old agents might have gone rogue, though. Or a lot of them did - but one went...especially so.” Even mostly out of contact, working on his own as a vigilante, a man heard things. Whispers. Rumors. “Someone’s killing agents, Gabriel - and they started with Blackwatch and worked out. I wish you were here, you’d probably be able to figure it out just from what model of gun he favors, you always knew your soldiers so damn well.”

Once, he’d seen Gabriel determine the locations of his entire squad just by paying attention to footsteps and gunshots, because Gabriel Reyes knew his men  _ that well.  _ Gabriel was the competent one, the real leader, Jack had always just been a pretty face. He should have stayed just a soldier, never been promoted to Strike Commander, especially not  _ over Reyes.  _ The UN had pretended it was a lateral move, to set Reyes up with Blackwatch, but given that Gabriel had reported to Jack…

It was a demotion. Not because Gabriel had done anything  _ wrong,  _ even, but because his methods were a little more brutal than the UN liked when dealing with human targets. Blowing the heads off omnics with shotguns made for great propaganda, but doing it to  _ people,  _ apparently, was less good for the image of Overwatch as  _ heroic.  _

Gabriel had been pissed. At the UN, at Jack - and if Jack was being honest, he knew that had been the beginning of the end for their personal relationship. They’d reconciled, because Jack loved Gabriel so much it  _ hurt  _ and he had  _ begged _ for forgiveness, had even offered to go back to the UN and turn down the promotion, and Gabriel had sighed and shook his head and gathered Jack in his arms and told him “ _ don’t be an idiot, querido, it’s the opportunity of a lifetime,”  _ but things were never  _ really  _ the same. Jack had been blind to it then, because he’d been so glad to have what he thought was Gabriel’s forgiveness, but looking back he knew that Gabriel had never  _ quite  _ forgiven him.

He would give anything for a do-over, to be able to go back and get together the courage to tell the UN to shove it, to transfer himself to Blackwatch so he could keep doing what he did best, which was  _ being Gabriel Reyes’s SIC.  _

“God, Reyes,” Jack breathed, and he really did feel like  _ Jack  _ again, instead of grizzled, bitter Soldier: 76, “I miss you so fucking much it hurts. What the hell were you even thinking, throwing your life away for mine? How did you imagine that was gonna go?” He wanted to be angry, but he couldn’t manage it - not after six years, not when Gabriel’s death was still like an open wound in his chest.

Besides, he knew exactly what Gabriel was thinking - because he would have been thinking the same thing, if their positions had been reversed. All that would have mattered was making sure Gabriel was safe - and he strongly suspected Gabriel had been thinking about nothing more than making sure  _ he  _ was safe.

It hurt.

It sent him right back to Zurich, to grabbing Angela’s hand and squeezing and begging her to save Gabriel, to everything after.

He reached into his jacket and pulled out the pair of dog tags he always wore - not his, no, because he’d given up anything identifying when he went on the run. Gabriel’s.

Angela had pressed them into his hands in Zurich, eyes wide and filled with tears, guilt written all over her face.

_ “I’m sorry, Jack,” _ she’d said,  _ “I couldn’t save him,”  _ and that was the moment Jack Morrison died, too. He’d curled around Gabriel’s dog tags and sobbed brokenly and wished that he hadn’t just lost the one constant in his life. 

That was when he had decided he couldn’t go back to leading Overwatch. Not without his SIC, his partner, his...his other half, if he was being entirely honest. So he had concocted the plan to fake his death with Angela, because the world didn’t need Jack Morrison anymore. Not when Jack Morrison was broken down the middle, not when Morrison couldn’t be the Strike Commander Overwatch needed. Not when he was grieving too hard to think.

“I keep thinking about leaving these here,” Jack said, softly, “but I’m selfish, Gabi - I need something of yours so I remember why I keep doing this. Especially when I’m tired and hurting and everything seems to be going wrong, I need to remember that you thought there was something else for me, something more.” He ran a gloved thumb over the raised lettering, sighing faintly. “You died for me, I have to make that mean something.”

Sometimes that was the only thing that got him rolling out of bed in whatever safehouse he’d holed up in, the only thing that made him want to do more than lay around and wallow in everything he’d lost. In Gabriel being gone, in Overwatch being shut down, in all his friends thinking he was dead, in watching the world fall apart all around him. 

Gabriel Reyes thought he deserved to keep on living. Gabriel Reyes was so sure he needed to keep on living that he’d traded his life for Jack’s without a moment’s hesitation. For Jack to quit would be to dishonor that sacrifice. That was, at least, what he kept telling himself.

“I was in Dorado not too long ago,” he said, and there was something almost fond in the way he recalled it. “Got to feel like a hero again - went after this gang, Los Muertos, and I tore apart this weapons shipment they had coming in - you would have been proud, Gabi, it was something you and your Blackwatch boys would have done.” He let himself feel a little proud of what he’d accomplished. “They got away with some of the cargo, though, because -- there was this kid, can’t have been more than thirteen or so, who ended up in the middle of it.” He remembered the moment of indecision - the moment of  _ the mission  _ vs.  _ an innocent life,  _ and how the question had rapidly become  _ but what would Gabriel do?  _ Really, when he asked it like that, there had been no question. “One of those Los Muertos bastards threw a grenade her way, and what the hell else was I gonna do? I let ‘em get away, but I saved the kid. You would’ve done it too, and you would have beat yourself up for letting the cargo get away but you would’ve known it was the right thing to do.” Jack sighed. “I don’t get to feel like I did the right thing often enough anymore, Gabi, but watching her run into her mama’s shop grinning like anything, safe and sound and excited about heroes? That was a feel-good moment like you won’t  _ believe,  _ querido.”

He hadn’t learned much Spanish, but he’d heard Gabriel say that - and whisper it, and growl it, and purr it - enough that the pronunciation had stuck. He turned the dog tags over in his hand, found himself wandering from one thing to the next, right back around to himself and Gabriel.

“There’s something I haven’t told you yet, Gabi, because I keep almost doing it and then chickening out. It seems stupid to say it now, anyway, when I couldn’t make myself do it when it really mattered, but - I was thinking of asking you to marry me, before it all went to shit. I could never get up the courage, though. I...I was scared. That you’d say no.” He ran a thumb over the name on the tags again, and huffed. “I wish I’d asked, even if you  _ would  _ have laughed in my face. At least then that’d be one less what-if.” There were  _ so  _ many of those. What if he’d pushed harder after McCree quit, what if he’d probed further after Gérard was murdered, what if he had just sucked it up and asked Gabriel to marry him like he wanted to, and damn the press and the UN. “I guess, maybe you would have said yes. Maybe we would have been in Indiana or California planning a wedding instead of in Zurich. A whole lot of maybes, Gabriel, and I feel like when I make one shut up I’ve got another nipping on its heels.” 

That was his life, now. Regrets and maybes and what-ifs, because there was so little to look forward to, all he could do was look backwards.

He stood up, slowly. 

“I feel like that’s enough of a bombshell to drop on you for one visit,” he said, slightly dryly. He picked up his visor and mask, but before he reaffixed either, he leaned forward one last time, running a hand over the name on the gravestone.

“I love you, Gabriel. Always have. Probably always will.”

He slipped the visor back in place, and began to carefully weave out of the cemetery.

Not long after he pushed himself over the fence, something buzzed in his pocket. He frowned, pulling out the old Overwatch comm he’d hung onto almost entirely for nostalgia purposes. Its familiar weight in his jacket kept him feeling anchored when sometimes he thought he might float off into the ether, but now it was lighting up, bright red, an  _ emergency. _

His pulse picked up.

There was a flash of right red text - one single word:  


_ Recall. _

Soldier: 76 stared for a long moment. It could be a trap, perhaps. It could also be legitimate. Part of him ached to take the simple step, press the "talk" button on the comm, find out who was calling. 

He ached to go _home._

Then again, he was pretty sure home for him was a person, and that person was six feet under the gravestone he'd just been talking to.  


He dropped the comm on the ground, grinding it under his heel.

No reason to risk being tracked, because he certainly wouldn’t be responding to that call. Jack Morrison was dead. Overwatch hardly needed to be lead by a ghost.

It would feel just as wrong to return to an Overwatch without Gabriel now as it had six years previous.

76 tried to pretend that wasn’t the first, last, and most important reason for his decision, but he could only lie to himself for so long.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on tumblr, at [songstressfox](http://songstressfox.tumblr.com)!


End file.
